|
|
|
|
|
|
1Q 2010 • info@IMSForum.org • www.NGNForum.org • www.IMSForum.org
|
NGN/IMS Plugfest 9 Launch and New Technical Working Groups in 2010
Dear NGN Forum / IMS Forum members and colleagues,
Happy holidays to all and looking forward to a successful 2010 year for all.
The NGN and IMS Forums' Plugfests are the industry's premier interoperability events covering NGN services over wireless 3G, 4G, LTE, WiMAX, wireline xDSL, cable, fiber optics broadband and IMS architectures.
We are pleased to announce that the Diameter and Control plane TWG and interoperability group successfully completed their initial guideline documents and testing/IOT activities at Plugfest 8 in October, 2009. The forum technical and business group is now progressing to the next stage of releasing all the test documentation and planning for the next Plugfest event. Our next IMS Plugfest™ and NGN Plugfest™ interoperability test event, Plugfest 9, will take place in the first week of June 2010 at the InterOperability Lab (UNH IOL) in Durham, NH.
The NGN Forum & IMS Forum themes for this Plugfest are NGN Network and IMS Rich Applications deployment. Topics under consideration will include:
- IMS core, CSCF, AS, HSS, Policy
- Inter and intra network testing area of key interest, billing services interdomain scenarios, roaming users, visited networks scenarios, applications presence, voice, video, user agents
- SDP / Rich Communications Services (RCS) / Voice Features and IMS Applications
- VoIP / SIP / QoS
- Security and Reliability
- Billing - off-line charging and on-line charging
- Control Plane and Diameter
- Voice over LTE/4G
- IP Video (IPTV)
- Wireless and Smart Grids
- Messaging, IP traffic, presence, IM and termination, integration
- Implementation of Convergence: integrating legacy to NGN
- Transition 3G to 4G LTE and WiMAX
- Metrics for standard sets of SIP call flows in IMS and NGN
- IPv6, and
- others
We will define network topologies based on the participants’ requirements for these tests. We are also excited about the soon to be released IP BSS/OSS and security architecture guidelines to be released in January 2010.
Planning is well underway at the NGN Forum technical working groups (TWG), which have been holding regular joint sessions for the planning of Plugfest 9.
The latest addition under review to the technical working groups plan for 2010 is going to be in areas of EPC (includes Packet Core, AAA, Policy, DPI etc.), VoIP/LTE, Service Delivery Platform (SDP), IP Video/IPTv, IMS BSS, NGN Security and 4G Technical and Business Marketing Working Groups. The groups launch will be announced early 2010. Companies interested in TWG participation and demo / interoperability PF9 testing should contact Admin@NGNForum.org.
Starting 2010, the working groups are meeting every other week to define TWG objectives and Plugfest/IOT planning.
The NGN Forum and IMS Forum are the only industry associations dedicated to interoperability and certification of IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and Next Generation (NGN) applications and services for fixed, mobile and cable networks. Participation in NGN IMS Plugfests and Technical working Groups is open to all companies. We look forward to your participation in our 2010 Working Groups and in Plugfests. For more information please contact Info@NGNForum.org or visit www.NGNForum.org, www.IMSForum.org.
Regards,
Michael Khalilian
NGN Forum, IMS Forum, ISC, IPCC, VoIP Forums, IP Multimedia Forums
|
|
Market Research Corner
|
|
According to a November 4 Wireless Week article, “Operator Heavyweights Throw Support Behind IMS”, several industry big wigs including AT&T, Orange, Vodafone and Ericsson have voiced their support for IMS to handle voice and SMS traffic on LTE networks. IMS is the protocol of choice by the 3GPP standards body but proponents of alternate protocols argue that an interim technology is needed to handle voice and data over LTE before IMS is adopted. One of these interim technologies, voice over LTE via generic access (VoLGA), has pushed the industry to adopt VoLGA as an interim measure. So far, that effort has only attracted one operator: Germany's T-Mobile.
Infonetics Research: VoIP services bring in $21 billion for service providers in 1H09; strong demand continues Market research firm Infonetics Research recently released its biannual VoIP and UC Services and Subscribers report, which tracks business and residential/SOHO voice over IP services and includes a North America Business VoIP Services Leadership Matrix that analyzes and ranks the top service providers in the VoIP business services market.
Demand for residential and business VoIP services continues to grow even as spending in other communication areas tightens. For the first half of 2009, the worldwide VoIP services market grew to $20.7 billion. Residential VoIP services remain healthy, comprising the majority of worldwide VoIP services revenue, and subscribers are up 14% from the end of 2008. On the business VoIP side, while managed IP PBX revenue growth has slowed in line with IP PBX shipments, Infonetics is expecting IP Centrex and hosted UC service revenue to grow 26% year-over-year in 2009.
Key findings of the report include:
- IP connectivity services currently make up about a third of total VoIP business service revenue, growing to 40% of the total by 2013 (managed IP PBX services and hosted VoIP and UC services make up the balance)
- The current sweet spot of the North American IP Centrex market is small business (those with fewer than 100 employees)
- Roughly two-thirds of all IP Centrex seats sold in the first half of 2009 went to small businesses
- While the largest VoIP services opportunities are in North America and EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa), demand for VoIP services is growing fast in Asia Pacific and Central and Latin America. For the first half of 2009, Japan's NTT, France Telecom, and Comcast in North America retain their leadership as the world's largest residential VoIP service providers, together holding nearly 20% of the world's VoIP subscribers
- The number of residential/SOHO VoIP subscribers is forecast to top 225 million by 2013
Infonetics' VoIP and UC services report provides worldwide and regional market size, forecasts, and analysis of residential VoIP services, business VoIP and UC services, and residential/SOHO VoIP subscribers. Business voice services tracked include managed IP PBX services, hosted VoIP and unified communication services (IP Centrex by business size, UC applications, UC telephony), and IP connectivity services (VoIP VPN/IP access, SIP trunking, IP integrated access). For more information visit: http://www.infonetics.com/login.
|
|
NGN Forum Q & A
|
|
 Q & A with Alice Bartram, AVP Marketing, Billing & Active Customer Management, Comverse
Please provide us with some brief background on your company?
Comverse is the world’s leading provider of software and systems enabling value-added services for voice, messaging, mobile Internet and mobile advertising; converged billing and active customer management; and IP communications. Comverse’s extensive customer base spans more than 130 countries and covers over 500 communication service providers serving more than two billion subscribers. The company’s innovative product portfolio enables communication service providers to unleash the value of the network for their customers by making their networks smarter. Comverse’s solutions support flexible deployment models, including in-network, hosted and managed services, and can run on circuit-switched, IP, IMS or converged network environments. Comverse is a subsidiary of Comverse Technology, Inc. (CMVT.PK).
What IMS and NGN services and products does your company offer today and what are some of the key differentiators for your company in this market? What are your future product plans?
Comverse is one of the only vendors to provide the entire services value chain: network elements, rich communication services and converged ordering, provisioning, billing and customer management, providing a one-stop shop while ensuring maximum interoperability. Our objective is to make operators’ networks smarter by creating a Communication Environment which features solutions for BSS, value added services, and IP communications based on a holistic platform, truly enabling the network and billing to effectively work as ONE.
Just as IMS promises to converge and unify networks under a common platform operators’ BSS/OSS environments need to be comprehensive enough to support any network, any service and any payment type, ensuring that next generation services and bundles can be accurately provisioned, ordered, rated, charged and billed. BSS/OSS capabilities – from marketing, sales and customer management through to charging and billing – need to be provided as a unified whole. This means a single code base, with all functionality built around a single data model, supported by a single product catalog and with a single operations, maintenance and security approach across the whole solution. This approach to BSS must also sit firmly in the network – to the level of call/session control.
The Comverse ONE Billing & Active Customer Management solution is the only converged BSS solution to unify marketing, sales, ordering, customer management and billing around a single data model and product catalog. The solution supports next generation charging interfaces such as Diameter and SIP and can support next generation business models with an ability to support any network, any service, and any payment type. Built on a strong market proven heritage of both in-network engineering as well as IT based financial systems Comverse ONE supports BSS needs today and more importantly in a next generation world by providing:
- One complete real-time subscriber view.
- Multi-dimensional policy management (beyond network & service allocation, addresses authorization, rating, charging, identity management (enterprise v. personal) and financial liability management).
- Financial control.
- Marketing agility.
Comverse also is continuing investments in IMS and Telco 2.0 to enable Telcos to open their networks to develop 3rd party applications via APIs.
How do the NGN and IMS Forum’s Plugfests benefit your company and its customers?
The Plugfest(s) benefit Comverse by enabling us to validate our solutions – demonstrating to operators that our products are interoperable with other vendor solutions, especially with regards to Diameter. Our customers benefit from being assured that they have bought into products that can work well in a multi-vendor environment. Additionally it enables us to prove that Comverse ONE is a future-proof solution truly capable of handling any network and service.
How does a verification and certification process aid in the development of NGN and IMS interoperability/standards?
The verification and certification processes provide a framework to our potential customers for evaluating interoperability claims. It also gives an indication of our overall strategy regarding interoperability and of our willingness to reach out to potential partners. Ultimately the process uncovers issues which can be fed back into the standardization bodies, while establishing best practices and common terminology.
Who are some of your customers and what NGN and IMS services are they deploying?
Over twenty of our customers are utilizing UMTS networks. UMTS is 3G; however it is the underlying technology being developed into 4G. Some of our customers that utilize UMTS networks and the advanced services they are offering are detailed below:
- Play (Poland) offers video, video calling and media content
- MTEL (Montenegro) video calling, call completion and roaming services
- GTEL (Vietnam) offers ringback tones, GPRS, Messaging, call back and USSD menu browsing
- Smart Communications (Phillipines) offers video calling, video mail, high-speed mobile internet access, GPRS and call completion
What are some areas of NGN and IMS where you have found challenges for operators?
Communication Service Providers (CSPs) continue to focus mainly on applications and enabling networks with little thought or strategy formulated around the provisioning, rating, charging, ordering, fulfillment and customer care aspects associated with NGN services and the NGN customer experience. The main challenges from a BSS perspective are charging flexibility, quality of service control and bundling flexibility across multiple services.
One of the fundamental requirements behind any IMS and NGN services strategy should be whether the BSS environment can effectively monetize such investments, while also ensuring end-to-end quality of service to maximize the subscriber experience meaning that in-network capabilities and a real-time, holistic view of the subscriber are essential.
So while a fast, effective and up-to-date network certainly plays its part in providing the subscriber with a “next generation” experience, converged billing and interactive customer management are vitally important factors which will ultimately determine how effectively operators will monetize network investments and NGN services. Carriers need to understand in real-time who is using which services and applications - across product families and devices - to personalize real-time offers based on profiles and consumption levels, in order to tailor pricing, or even monitor usage to limit financial exposure.
Today, operators’ eco-systems remain a patchwork of discrete, service-specific systems – all having their own way of interpreting and managing data, creating inefficient business processes, duplication, and both causing and preserving capability gaps while keeping long term cost of ownership high. This approach does not allow effective bundling nor does it allow accurate charging thus most CSPs are relegated to proceed with the flat-rate business model, which does not allow them to fully extract service value.
Are there any other critical benchmarks that need to take place in this IMS NGN evolution?
Critical benchmarks include: wide spread interoperability, end-to-end quality of service control– if you commit a certain QoS to a subscriber, the operator will need to ensure that the QoS is followed through the entire network – and seamless service transitions across networks and devices. This of course will need to be supported by a comprehensive BSS solution – with an ability to support multiple dimensions of convergence – that is network facing and can blend customer information such as profile, usage and status, with network knowledge. So when a customer is accessing multiple services within a single session, the BSS infrastructure would be updated and know how to charge accordingly. Or if a subscriber is in a low bandwidth area and is trying to download a video, the BSS would know and offer alternatives to prevent the subscriber from having a poor service experience.
What are some of the key factors for NGN and IMS success in the industry?
Operators need to build a business case centered on the customer experience when planning NGN and IMS strategies. CSPs need to ask themselves:
- Is my existing BSS environment capable of supporting a holistic customer experience across all of my services? Across all touch points: Web, IVR, call center, device?
- Can I support personalized real-time marketing?
- Can I offer spending control and payment flexibility?
- Does my BSS environment effectively support seamless service transitions across networks, devices and payment types?
- Can my BSS environment support real-time policy management, rating and charging for all or some targeted services?
Without a holistic view of the customer, and the ability to quickly provision and accurately rate, charge and bill any service across any network or device, the success of IMS and NGN investments is weakened. To ensure a high-quality and seamless user experience, BSS/OSS capabilities – from marketing, sales and customer management through to charging and billing – need to be provided as a unified whole. Only this approach enables Active Customer Management: the ability to manage all customers consistently in a real-time interactive manner regardless of how the customer chooses to pay for services or interacts with the operator. Delivered through a set of unified applications that support an operator’s sales, marketing, fulfillment and customer management and self-service needs, this new paradigm provides data consistency ensuring one complete view, accessible by both the operator and the end-user, regardless of customer touch point.
To have your company considered for a profile in the Q & A section of this newsletter send an email to pr@ngnforum.org.
|
|
NGN Forum IMS Forum Technical Working Groups Update
|
|
The NGN Forum would like to thank Plugfest 8 participants, contributors, advisors, sponsors and the test management of the following companies for a successful test event in October 2008:
Comverse • HP • MU Dynamics • Marben Products/NE Technologies • NTT-AT • RADVISION • Tekelec • NICT (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology of Japan) • US Government Communications Groups (NCS/DHS) • Sonus Networks • Tektronix • Testing Technologies GmbH • Alcatel-Lucent • Acision • Aricent • IIT (Illinois Institute of Technology) • UNH-IOL • T-Mobile • Intel • T-Mobile • Intel • Billing & OSS World • CTIA • GSMA • Informa • NGN Magazine (TMC) • Supercomm • TMF and Trendsmedia.
The IMS / NGN Diameter and Control plane interoperability group successfully completed their testing and IOT activities at Plugfest 8. The group is now progressing to the next stage of releasing all the test documentation and planning for the next Plugfest event. The group was formed in 2008 and chaired by Bruno Deslandes (Marben-Products). Some of the member participants included Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), Aricent, HP, Mu Dynamics, Radvision, Sonus, Testing Technologies, Wipro, Data Connection Ltd (DCL).
Technology and business marketing working groups completed the draft release of IP BSS/Security documents, Plugfest 8 test plan and are launching the Plugfest 9 IOT group in January 2010. Also, the new working groups will be launched by February 2010. Any company who is interested in partnerships, research or interoperability testing is welcome to contact the Forum for more information. Starting January, the working groups will meet every other week to define objectives and Plugfest planning. The following Working Group meetings were held since Plugfest 8 in October 2009:
- Plugfest 9 initial planning meeting at PF8 event, Presentation is available, send request to (admin@ngnforum.org)
- Plugfest 8 event (test report plan for Jan 2010)
- IP BSS/OSS & Security (on-going, initial document plan for Jan 2010)
- Control plane/Diameter (completed the initial testing and documents)
- Supercomm09 technology board meetings (Oct 2009)
- IIT VoIP (Oct 2009)
- Tele-management OSS meetings (Dec 2009)
|
|
|
|
NGN Forum Calendar of Events
|
|
In addition to moderating panels at the Internet Telephony and 4G shows this fall The NGN IMS Forum also participated in:
· Oct. 21, 2009: Supercomm, Chicago, IL, Special Session#1: IMS Forum Presents: Results from Plugfest 8 - Interoperability for IP Applications & B/OSS and Charging in Converged IMS & NGN networks
· Oct. 22, 2009: Supercomm, Chicago, IL, Telecom Goes Hollywood - Networks for the Digital Age
· Oct. 23, 2009: Supercomm, Chicago, IL, Panel Session: No Strings Attached - Wireless Networking Growth & Challenges
· Oct. 29, 2009: VoIP Conference & Expo at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, NGN Networks - Transitions and operations and VoIP and NGN Networks Mini-conference
· Dec. 8-10, 2009: TMF, Orlando, FL
Calendar of upcoming conferences:
· Jan. 20-22, 2010: Internet Telephony Conference & Expo, Miami, FL
· Jan. 20-22, 2010: ITExpo/4GWE, Los Angeles, CA
· Jan. 27-28, 2010: TMF, Singapore
· Feb. 15-18, 2010: Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, Spain
· March 14-17, 2010: CompTel, Nashville, TN
· March 23-25, 2010: CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment 2010, San Diego, CA
· April 10-15, 2010: NAB, Las Vegas, NV
· May 11-13, 2010: NCTA, Los Angels, CA
· June 9-11, 2010: Billing & OSS World 2010, Washington, DC
· June 9-11, 2010: VON Conference & Expo 2010, South Beach, FL
· June 15-18, 2010: CommunicAsia 2010, Singapore
Showcase Your Expertise and Leadership: Call for Speakers
The NGN Forum and IMS Forum invites members to join its exclusive Speakers' Bureau. Member companies have an excellent opportunity to market their companies and senior executives while representing the Forum at future trade shows and conferences. Simply contact us with a copy of the proposed speaker's bio and indicate any specific NGN and IMS-related speaking topics and expertise. Speaking topic abstracts of one or two paragraphs are especially helpful. Please send to: pr@ngnforum.org.
|
|
NGN/IMS Forum in the News
|
|
The following highlights some recent press coverage of the NGN/IMS Forum:
|
|
|
|
Recent NGN/IMS Forum Press Releases
|
|
|
|
Why Join the NGN Forum or IMS Forum?
|
|
The NGN/IMS Forum's mission is to accelerate the interoperability of NGN and IMS applications and services, enabling enterprise and residential consumers to quickly benefit from the delivery of quadruple play voice, video, Internet and mobile services over broadband via cable, mobile and fixed networks.
NGN/IMS applications and services comprise residential VoIP, entertainment including IPTV and gaming, IP Centrex / IP PBX and unified communications for business including fixed-mobile converged services, videoconferencing and web-collaboration. NGN and IMS networks include DSL, Cable, GSM, UMTS, Wi-Fi and WiMAX implementations.
The NGN/IMS Forum Plugfests, typically held every 3 to 4 months, bring together dozens of industry-leading NGN and IMS vendors from around the world, all of whom build real, full-featured, NGN and IMS networks during the test event.
If you are interested in joining the NGN/IMS Forum, Plugfests or in participating in any of the working groups or marketing programs, please contact the NGN/IMS Forum.
All are invited to participate in the industry's first open NGN/IMS Community where Forum members, those involved in various NGN and IMS working groups, the IMS Linkedin group, our industry and colleagues around the world can participate in active, mutually beneficial discussions. Take a moment to register now.
Our members are shaping the future of the NGN and IMS. Joining the NGN/IMS Forum enables members to:
- Verify and certify interoperability, reduce costs and accelerate time to market
- Participate in technical working groups focusing on service creation and applications for NGN/IMS architecture, framework and deployment issues
- Gain additional visibility through the NGN/IMS Forum's Speakers Bureau, public relations and marketing programs
- Showcase member companies at major telecom, cable, and wireless events in North America, Asia, and Europe
- Receive current market and technology information through newsletters, reports, white papers and conferences
- Gain access to an informed professional network of industry consultants and accredited experts
Have a request? We welcome your feedback on this newsletter.
Press Contact: pr@ngnforum.org
|
|
